1. Field
The present invention relates generally to communications, and more specifically, to reducing the load of the reverse link and the power consumption of remote stations.
2. Background
The field of wireless communications has many applications including, e.g., cordless telephones, paging, wireless local loops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), Internet telephony, and satellite communication systems. A particularly important application is cellular telephone systems for remote subscribers. As used herein, the term “cellular” system encompasses both cellular and personal communications services (PCS) frequencies. Various over-the-air interfaces have been developed for such cellular telephone systems including, e.g., frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), and code division multiple access (CDMA). In connection therewith, various domestic and international standards have been established including, e.g., Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS), Global System for Mobile (GSM), and Interim Standard 95 (IS-95). IS-95 and its derivatives, IS-95A, IS-95B, ANSI J-STD-008 (often referred to collectively herein as IS-95), and proposed high-data-rate systems are promulgated by the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) and other well known standards bodies.
Cellular telephone systems configured in accordance with the use of the IS-95 standard employ CDMA signal processing techniques to provide highly efficient and robust cellular telephone service. Exemplary cellular telephone systems configured substantially in accordance with the use of the IS-95 standard are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,103,459 and 4,901,307, which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein. An exemplary system utilizing CDMA techniques is the cdma2000 ITU-R Radio Transmission Technology (RTT) Candidate Submission (referred to herein as cdma2000), issued by the TIA. The standard for cdma2000 is given in the draft versions of IS-2000 and has been approved by the TIA and 3GPP2. Another CDMA standard is the W-CDMA standard, as embodied in 3rd Generation Partnership Project “3GPP,” Document Nos. 3G TS 25.211, 3G TS 25.212, 3G TS 25.213, and 3G TS 25.214.
The telecommunication standards cited above are examples of only some of the various communications systems that can be implemented. Within these various communications systems, multiple users must share limited system resources. In accordance with the actual system implementation, resources such as frequency bandwidth, time, transmission power, or spreading code assignments are typically shared by multiple users within the system. In a FDMA system, the system bandwidth is divided into many frequency channels and each frequency channel is allocated to a user. In a TDMA system, the system bandwidth is divided into many time slots and each time slot is allocated to a user. In a CDMA system, the system bandwidth is simultaneously shared among all users by using spreading codes, wherein each user is assigned a spreading code.
User demand drives the design and development of more efficient systems. The present invention addresses this need by allowing remote stations to individually employ an improved Control-Hold Mode that will reduce the overall load of the reverse link and the power consumption of remote stations. The reverse link comprises the communication channels from the remote stations directed to a base station. The forward link comprises the communication channels from a base station to various remote stations operating within the range of the base station. A remote station that is operating in the improved Control-Hold Mode will not be monitoring nor responding to most of the forward link transmissions from a base station. Hence, when individual remote stations are operating in the improved Control-Hold Mode, the overall load of the reverse link will be reduced.
Moreover, once a remote station enters into the improved Control-Hold Mode, some of the processing circuitry that is utilized for monitoring and responding to forward link signals will be left idle, which immediately and directly impact the power consumption of the remote station. Hence, another benefit of employing the improved Control-Hold Mode will be an increase in the battery life of a remote station.